Transport conveyances such as aircraft are used for transporting, freight and/or passengers. In the transporting of freight items, certain items require lashing while other items require latching or locking the respective items to the loading floor. The carrying of passengers requires latching or interlocking passenger seats to the loading floor. The freight items to be transported may have a multitude of different features. There are standardized freight units referred to as unit load devices (ULDs). Such unit load devices include containers, pallets, or netting. Additionally, freight items may include nonstandardized goods, such as bags lashed to chip boards or even vehicles including heavy trucks and caterpillar tread vehicles. The relatively high loads that these goods represent, particularly when military goods are to be transported, impose very high requirements regarding static and structural features of the loading floor construction and of the required load lashing or load latching components or points.
Lashing points, or rather lashing devices are provided for securing loads to the loading floor by a lashing ring. The lashing points or devices are numerous and generally distributed at equal spacings all over the freight space, or rather the loading floor. The lashing ring of each lashing point is secured to the aircraft frame structure, customarily to the ribs or spars for example by screws, in order to take up large forces and moments in all directions. However, such lashing points or lashing devices are not usable for the transport of commercial freight pallets. Commercial freight pallets are required to be latched or locked down by so-called XZ-latching devices and YZ-latching devices.
German Patent Publication DE 39 43 077 or German Patent Publication DE 41 02 274 describe such conventional latching devices for locking commercial freight items or units within the freight loading system, more specifically to the loading floor of an aircraft. The lashing by means of lashing rings is not possible with these commercial load items because the items do not have any possibilities for securing the lashing rings to the freight items. The conventional latching or locking elements are positioned in predetermined stowing positions for locking freight units in these positions. For example, so-called XZ-latching devices are known, which are capable of securing a load in the longitudinal or X-direction of an aircraft as well as in the vertical or Z-direction. Such locking of a freight unit or freight item is possible because a latching hook grips a projection or into a recess of the freight item. Conventional YZ-latches grip laterally into the freight item, thereby providing an interlock in the lateral or Y-direction and in the vertical or Z-direction. The use of such conventional latching devices, however, requires a rigid mounting of these latching devices on or in the loading floor of a freight deck. Thus, in addition to the required lashing points, a multitude of latching points would have to be provided for the interlocking or latching elements in order to transport freight items that cannot be lashed to the loading floor because these freight items do not have any connecting elements or points for cooperation with the lashing ring.